One of the most serious limitations in the training of fighter pilots for proficiency in air-to-air gunnery has been the lack of realistic practice targets and of devices for reliably scoring the targets that have been used.
Common practice targets currently in use include darts, banners, Figats (fiberglass aerial targets), and drones. The first three of these targets are towed and, therefore, are restricted in their maneuverability. They are also much smaller than typical aircraft targets which makes long-range gunnery particularly difficult to practice.
These limitations are overcome in large part through the use of drones, but this approach is prohibitively expensive for regular squadron training because of the high cost of expendables, e.g., drone targets and live ammunition. Also, the use of live ammunition and the generation of target debris creates a flight safety problem and restricts the airspace available for training because of the hazard presented by falling debris. Also, in the case of drones, expensive control systems are required and the drones, themselves, are capable of being used only once. When towed targets are used the cost is inflated by the need to provide tractor aircraft as well as additional pilots for the tractor aircraft.
In addition to the cost and safety problems, there has been no satisfactory method for measuring missed distance when scoring the results of a practice run. Only those rounds which actually make holes in the target can be reliably scored when using the prior art targets. Further, it is frequently difficult to determine with any accuracy what detailed control action by the pilot produced the practice results from merely correlating the hits and misses recorded on the gunsight videotape.
The most serious limitation, however, is the lack of realism in target maneuverability. Techniques developed for effective firing against small, non-maneuvering targets may be incorrect for effective firing against large, evasive targets encoutered in actual air combat.
There have been attempts in the prior art to "fire" simulated bullets against real, manned aircraft targets rather than firing real bullets against simulated aircraft targets. Such real-time systems, however, have required a capability for automatic angle and range tracking of the target in order to compute, for display in the cockpit, the number of hits per "fired" burst. Although such target tracking is desirable, there are many realistic, air-to-air gun firing situations when sufficient time is not available to achieve any type of angle and range tracker lockon even when this capability is available on the aircraft.